Arthur Nichols and Change Ringing in Boston

by Mira Whiting

A letter sent on May 28th, 1910 by one of the most famous American change ringers of the early twentieth
century, Dr. Arthur Nichols gives a fascinating glimpse into
some of the history of the bells in Boston and the people who have
rung them. Nichols was an important figure in the world of early
twentieth century change ringing in the United States, and the New
England area in particular. This letter raises
questions of what the interactions between different groups of
change ringers in the New England area consisted of, who ringers were in the early twentieth century in terms
of class and education level, and how change ringing
intersected with the realm of politics on the state, national, and
international level.

Although change ringing is a quintessentially British activity, there is a long history of
ringing in North America. There were at least four towers with change ringing bells in North
America before the Revolutionary War. Two of them were in South Carolina at St. George's
Church, Dorchester which was built in 1753 and at St. Michael's Church which was built in
1764 in Charleston.1 The third was in Boston, Massachusetts at Christ Church in the City
of Boston, commonly called Old North Church which was built in 17232 and the fourth was
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was also called Christ Church and was built in 1754.3

After the revolution, there was a huge drop in interest in ringing,
mainly because it was associated with the British and therefore was
something to be avoided. Nichols made it his
mission in life to revive the art of change ringing and the
activity gained popularity again. His main focus in his attempt to
increase the popularity of change ringing was to try to get as many
new sets of bells installed as he could. It was as a part of this
endeavor that the letter from May 1910 was written.

According to his daughter, Margaret Homer Shurcliff, Nichols who was born in 1840,
grew up not far from Old North, and it was there that he fell in love with the sound of
the bells which were chimed rather than rung at that time. He learned to ring while on a trip to England years later. When he came
back and heard that Old North was undergoing renovations, he became one of the driving forces
in getting the bells restored so they could be rung for change ringing.4 Nichols was also
the driving force behind the installation of other rings of bells including the Groton School
in Groton, Massachusetts, Memorial Tower in Hingham, Massachusetts,
University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, the bells at Church of the Advent in Boston, Massachusetts,
and the bells at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.5

It is this last ring of bells on which I would like to focus now. The letter sent by Nichols to the Honerable
Nicholas Longworth on May 28, 1910 concerns the bells that eventually ended up at
the Perkins School for the Blind, but were originally intended for
Harvard and then the Customs House Tower in Boston. This letter was
found in the collection of Nichols's papers which are housed at the
Boston Athenaeum in Boston, Massachusetts.

The letter is almost three pages long typewritten with occasional hand-corrections. Nichols
implies that Longworth is already familiar with the situation regarding the bells in question since very little background of it is given.
Nichols also implies that he has considered testifying before Congress about the eventual-Perkins bells by his reference to a trip to Washington, D.C. This is curious because most of the
documents about this project suggest that the legal dealings were
mostly at the state level and not the federal level.

After the salutation comes a paragraph in which Nichols introduces himself to Longworth
and justifies “taking the liberty”6 of contacting him directly rather than being introduced by a mutual acquaintance. In order to soften the rudeness of directly contacting Longworth,
Nichols attempts to provide common ground from which to start his missive by pointing out
their shared experience of being students at Harvard.7 It is important to note that it is his
place of education, which also comes up later in the letter, which serves as his way of gaining
the ear of Longworth.

After his introductions, Nichols quickly gets to his point and explains the project he
wishes to have Longworth's support for. Particularly striking in this second paragraph is
Nichols's assertion that the reason he was so keen on advocating the installation of bells at
the Groton School was with the long-term goal of replicating the kind of ringing environment
at Harvard as he had seen at universities when he travelled to England.8 In other documents in the same box as this one, it was clear that the bells under discussion in this letter
were originally intended to reside at Harvard, and it seems from this reference as if there
was still some possibility of this happening, at least in the mind of Arthur Nichols. This
seems a continuation of the connection between bells, ringers, and Harvard, an Ivy League
college which would have been accessible mainly to the wealthy. Perhaps Nichols also
intended to show Longworth that these bells would not go unrung since there was the possibility of steady influx of experienced ringers in the form of young men who had graduated
from the Groton School, an elite prep school which would have had a fair number of students
continue on with their educations at post-secondary institutions such as Harvard. Indeed,
he confirms that this is not outside the realm of possibility since “ringers from this school
[Groton] among the undergraduates are now six in number.”9 He claims that these ringers
are “competent” and would be vital to start a band of ringers at the new ring to go in at
the Customs House tower.

In the next paragraph of the letter, Nichols goes on to name
the donor, Mrs. Wheelwright, for the first time and to present her
wishes as to how her gift should be managed. He discusses the
formation of a board of trustees as well as where such trustees
might come from. Each trustee is to present a different viewpoint
in the managing of the bells, with one who can attest to the
physical safety of the tower for change ringing, one from Harvard,
and one a ringer. It also seems from this paragraph as if the
perennial concern of those installing bells cropped up in this case
as well, the issue of sound control. Indeed, it seems that Nichols
envisioned these bells as mainly being heard as time-tellers whether
it be in relation to the beginning or end of the workday or anything
else “the Treasury Department see fit to use them for.”10

Next Nichols discussed the teaching of new ringers. First, Nichols suggests that it might
be wise to bring over experienced ringers from England to teach the new band. This is a
bit odd because previously in the letter he had stated that the Groton alumni would be a
good “nucleus” for the new band.11 However,
it would mesh with the previous assumptions about the economic class
of ringers to assume that the English ringers would be able to
afford passage across the Atlantic and would be able to make such a
journey for the purpose of teaching ringing. Second, he states that
because there is so much mathematics involved in ringing only a few
students would be allowed to learn the art. This seems particularly
curious for two reasons. The first is that today, there is such a shortage of ringers that anyone is welcome
to learn. Perhaps such exclusiveness in Nichols's letter suggests
that there was less of a shortage of willing ringers in the early twentieth century. The other interesting part of this paragraph
is that Nichols expresses such a concern over the necessity of
ringers to understand the math involved in change ringing. Today,
it is common to have most of a band understand little to nothing of
the math while such knowledge is necessary only for creating new
methods or composing. This once again seems to confirm
that Nichols viewed change ringing as being for the elite
intellectual.

After addressing who would ring the bells and who would control the use of them, Nichols
then moved on to the last portion of his letter which concerned the controversy over the
physical bells. The issue was that in her donation, Mrs. Wheelwright had specified that
the bells must come from England, since she believed American bells to be inferior. This
controversy is elaborated upon more thoroughly in other letters contained in the same box as
the one being discussed. In this section of the letter, Nichols claims that the bells which were manufactured in
America were not bells at all but rather “steel tubes, which in the line of hideous discordant
noise could have given points to a Chinese Tom-Tom.”12 The controversy surrounding where
the bells would be made seems to indicate that there was international competition among
bell founders, which perhaps was why the federal government would have been interested in
the project, as was indicated by Nichols's plans to go to Washington to talk to Congress
about it.

To end this letter, Nichols once again plays upon his connections to Harvard, as well
as those presumed by the addressee, by reiterating that students at Groton who “intend to
apply for admission to Harvard” will be selected to learn to ring. This again reinforces his
theme that educated people would be the ringers of these bells.

A ring of bells for the Customs house tower was not to be and the bells ended up at the
Perkins School for the Blind,13 but this letter nevertheless shows many interesting
things about the state of change ringing in North America in the
early twentieth century. First, the fact that there seemed to be
enough enthusiasm for ringing that new rings of bells were being
donated. Also, it takes quite a large commitment of time to
learn to ring tower bells, and thus it is difficult to get new bands
started up. Second, Nichols seemed to think that the most likely
people to be interested in ringing the new bells would be educated,
wealthy young men who had gone to an elite school and were
continuing their education at an expensive, prestigious university. He also assumes that ringers
in England would be able to take time off from their lives to come
to Boston to teach ringing which would have been quite a committment of time and resources. This implies that
he believes those ringers to have quite a bit of disposable income
and leisure time. Lastly, Nichols suggests that in his view it is
necessary to have a full understanding of all of the underlying
concepts of the mathematical part of change ringing in order to be
good at it, which again implies that ringers must be highly
educated. This letter also hints at how politics and ringing
intersected in the early twentieth century and that the
international implications of where bells were made perhaps had
economic implications for American bell founders. This letter, and many others like it in the collection of Nichols' papers at the Boston Athenaeum provide quite interesting insights into the state of change ringing in New England in the early twentieth century.

J. Michael Simpson (ed.). There Was Life Before NAG. 2nd edition. Philadelphia, PA:
North American Guild of Change Ringers, 2000.

George Williams. Change Ringing in the Carolina Low-Country: A Full Record of Full-Circle Ringing from 1751 to 2000. Charleston, South Carolina: St. Michael's Church,

The Church of Stella Maris, and Grace Church, 1999.

Wilfrid G. Wilson. Change Ringing: The Art and Science of Change Ringing on Church and
Hand Bells. New York, NY: October House, 1965.

Footnotes

[1] ^
George Williams, Change Ringing in the Carolina Low-Country: A Full Record of Full- Circle Ringing from 1751 to 2000 (Charleston, South Carolina: St. Michael's Church, The Church of Stella Maris, and
Grace Church, 1999). 7-8.

Responses

Carl Scott ZimmermanMar 11 2014, 3:38 pm

Nichols' characterization of American-made bells as "steel tubes" suggests that he was probably aware of the relatively recent installation of a set of American-made tubular bells in the east tower of the Christian Science mother church in Boston. But clearly he was not aware that those tubular bells were made of conventional bell metal (bronze, not steel). If he was referring to the large quantities of cast steel bells being mass produced in America, he should have known that they were always sold singly, without any pretense of putting them together in musical instruments. In the ten years prior to Nichols' letter, the Meneely (Watervliet) bellfoundry had installed chimes of bronze bells in some 40 church towers across America, and it would go on to become the only American producer of carillon-quality bells in its era. So his characterization must be regarded as vituperative rather than factual.